The Environmental Student Assembly plans to continue researching and spreading awareness about USC’s ties to the fossil fuel industry in order to push the University beyond pulling their investments in fossil fuels to completely dissociating from the fossil fuel industry. 

Tiya Jain, the director of advocacy of ESA and a sophomore majoring in environmental science, said although USC’s connections to fossil fuel are not often talked about, ESA did not have much trouble conducting research on the topic. 

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“Our school has said that they’ve divested [from fossil fuels],” Jain said. “But we still have associations anywhere from teachers or faculty who have ties with Chevron who are now teaching or doing research here, or professors’ research being influenced by funding from Chevron.”

Goldstein said he hopes students can push USC to take accountability for its relationship and support of the fossil fuel industry, and for the University to better align itself with not only its sustainability standards, but also its justice and equity promises, which he said are incompatible with a commitment to fossil fuels. 

“The petroleum engineering [program] and CiSoft Research Center are training the next generation of fossil fuel extracting engineers … that’s unacceptable according to climate science work,” he said. “I want to follow the students’ lead on how to move forward. There are many aspects of how USC interacts with these companies that would be wonderful to call into question.”

ESA began formally working to end USC’s involvement with the fossil fuel industry in Spring 2023, when professor Joshua Goldstein informed them of the Campus Climate Network campaign, an international student-led initiative urging universities to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry. ESA got in touch with the campaign during the summer and met with other CCN organizers. 

Valerie Kuo, the co-executive director of ESA and a junior majoring in environmental studies, said after learning from other CCN organizers that having fossil fuel money in universities can lead to biases within research and other negative impacts, ESA held its own meeting to discuss how to implement change at USC. 

“We did a lot of brainstorming about how we can grow our campaign, whether that be creating an op-ed, creating a petition and actually having a full-on protest,” Kuo said. 

Kuo said the ESA’s goals are to build on the momentum of their mobilization from last semester — which included protests, sign-making and social media posts — and to continue to form connections with students and faculty on campus.

“[One] of our goals is definitely to have widespread knowledge of our campaign and more people mobilized and informed of what the University is having fossil fuel money in,” Kuo said. “And to possibly talk with any sort of administrators that do have access to where funding goes or how funding is spent. I think that’s very important as well.” 

From there, Goldstein said ending USC’s involvement with the fossil fuel industry would be a complex and nuanced undertaking, and that it was important to acknowledge the ways in which faculty could be negatively impacted if the money that funded their research or job was disrupted.

“In addressing [fossil fuels money at USC], we don’t want to harm colleagues in unnecessary ways and make their lives and research more difficult,” Goldstein said. “We need a lot more transparency and the ability to start having a discussion on whether we think these sources of funding … [are] acceptable when USC is acting as a leader in [sustainability].”

Beyond raising awareness, Jain said another goal of the ESA is to encourage more transparency from the University regarding its relationship with fossil fuel companies, and to ensure that the University stays true to its promises and commitments surrounding fossil fuels. 

“Even if we don’t get the University to commit to that right away … getting a more united front by the end of this semester would be really cool,” Jain said.